توسعه تامین کننده: بهبود عملکرد تامین کننده از طریق انتقال دانش

The dynamic business environment today requires organizations to effectively use all available resources to remain competitive. The quality and cost of a product or service offered in the market is a function, not only of the capabilities of the firm, but also the supplier network providing inputs to the enterprise. To remain competitive, organizations are increasingly implementing supplier development programs to maintain capable and high performance supply bases. This paper presents a conceptual model of an organization's efforts to improve supplier performance. Then latent variable structural equation modeling (LVSEM) is used to test the model with data for 215 supplier development experiences from US manufacturing firms. The results suggest that evaluation and certification efforts are the most important supplier development prerequisites before undertaking operational knowledge transfer activities such as site visits and supplier training. Furthermore, collaborative inter-organizational communication is identified as important supporting factor in transforming an organization's efforts to develop suppliers into supplier performance improvements.

Suppliers represent a critical resource to a firm providing both direct and indirect materials and services, which are inputs to the organization's product offerings. The quality and cost of a product or service offered in the market is a function, not only of the capabilities of the firm, but also of the network of suppliers who provide inputs to the enterprise. When an organization finds its suppliers lacking in performance it can help suppliers to develop their capabilities. There is strong evidence that organizations today are increasingly implementing supplier development programs to improve supplier performance and remain competitive. For example, Otis Elevator's (Bloomington, Indiana) supplier development program is considered a core activity for supply management. Executives at Eaton Corporation believe that their supplier development initiatives help drive continuous improvement through their supply base and achieve reduced supply base costs, improved quality and delivery, increased capacity, reduced lead times, and improved productivity. Similarly, John Deere's Enterprise Supply Management (ESM) group has implemented a program, “Achieving Excellence,” which is geared towards fostering supplier performance improvements. While firms increasingly make efforts to develop supplier performance, theoretical and empirical evidence of supplier development's value creation potential remains sparse. This research addresses this gap by providing evidence of the value creation potential and exploring the mechanisms through which it is achieved. A review of the literature indicates that Krause et al. (2000) is the only study, from a buying firm's perspective, which empirically tests the relationship between a firm's supplier development efforts and buyer's own product performance. This study complements their research by directly investigating the impact of supplier development on supplier performance improvements. What is currently known about supplier development? Watts and Hahn (1993) note that supplier development “involves a long term co-operative effort between the buying firm and its suppliers to upgrade the suppliers’ technical, quality, delivery and cost capabilities, and to foster ongoing improvements” (p. 12). Firms improve the performance of their suppliers by undertaking initiatives which transfer knowledge like their lean production practices into their supply base (MacDuffie and Helper, 1997 and Lieberman and Asaba, 1997). However, there is a lack of evidence whether such efforts lead to improved supplier performance, thereby creating value for the firm. Further, the role of other factors such as communication, which is critical to the interface between a firm and its suppliers, is untested in the context of supplier development. Poor communication is a prime cause of supplier product problems (Newman and Rhee, 1990) and channel difficulties (Mohr and Nevin, 1990), that can undermine the buying firm's efforts to improve supplier performance (Galt and Dale, 1991). Ineffective communication gives rise to conflict, which leads to “misunderstandings, incorrect strategies and mutual feelings of frustration” (Etgar, 1979, p. 65). While the importance of communication is well established in the context of buyer–supplier relationships, its role in supplier development efforts remains untested. By partially replicating the study by Krause et al. (2000), this research verifies the current state of knowledge about supplier development and extends our understanding with an additional investigation into the role of communication in the context of supplier development. While the Krause et al. (2000) implicitly uses the transaction cost economics framework, the investigation reported here uses a knowledge based view of the firm. These research viewpoints are discussed later. Since development programs are normally initiated and administered by the procuring firm, the research framework employed here focuses on the buying firm's efforts to improve supplier performance through supplier development programs, specifically through the use of ‘operational knowledge transfer activities’ (OKTA) with the supplier. While the theoretical foundations for the OKTA construct are presented in Section 2, the following two research questions are proposed: Does conducting OKTA with supplier lead to value creation in the form of supplier performance improvements? What role does communication play in supplier development programs? To investigate the research questions, a survey of US manufacturing firms utilizing supplier development programs was conducted and reported below. The following section provides an overview of supplier development strategies, the theoretical foundations for the construct of OKTA, related literature on inter-organizational communication and management involvement. Based upon this review, the conceptual model and hypotheses are discussed in Section 3. Section 4 presents the research methodology, data collection process, and discussion of results, followed by conclusions and a discussion of research perspectives for supplier development.

This study focused upon the procuring firm's efforts to improve supplier performance. Theoretical foundations of the construct of operational knowledge transfer activities are developed in line with the knowledge based view of the firm. The research tested a structural model of buying firm's perception of their supplier development efforts, providing several key in-sights regarding how supplier development efforts through operational knowledge transfer activities lead to value creation for firms in the form of improved supplier performance. First, evaluation and certification efforts lay a foundation for initiating OKTA. It ensures that the supplier has the minimum capabilities to warrant further investment of resources in the supplier and provides a tool for detecting development opportunities and benchmarking improvements. Second, incentives are important to effective supplier development partnerships. Firms develop suppliers with whom they expect to continue doing business and should communicate that expectation to the supplier. This provides an incentive for the supplier to open their facilities to the scrutiny of the customer. Third, OKTA facilitates the creation of value for an organization in the form of improved supplier performance. As organizations strive to create efficient and competitive supply networks, they enhance supplier performance and capabilities by diffusing their manufacturing and production expertise (e.g., SPC and SMED) in their supply bases. Implementing activities that enable the transfer of “tacit” production knowledge improves supplier skills, which benefits the customer organization in the form of a more capable and better performing supplier. Finally, collaborative communication acts as an important facilitator in transforming a buying firm's efforts for supplier development into performance improvements. Bi-directional sharing of tactical information enables the trading firms to operate more efficiently while sharing more proprietary information about cost structures and future plans. This enables firms to detect opportunities for improvement and align their objectives.